I'm Rishika.

Photography started as a hobby. Somewhere along the way I realised it was the only thing that gave me real joy — that feeling of contentment and satisfaction. So I keep working at it. I'm always evolving, always learning, never quite finished.

I love to explore, and I love to travel, and I fold the two into the work. I want to feel a place: to walk it, talk to the people in it, get to know them, and only then photograph them. What I'm after is who someone really is — not the version they perform for the camera.

I learned what this work can really do when an image changed a life. A series of photographs and a short documentary I made about one woman led to a stranger funding her education all the way through college. That's when it stopped being only about beautiful frames. The work can move people — and moving people can change things.

The imagery I make is raw, because I want you to feel the soul of the person in front of the lens, and the real emotion there — not only the happy, but all of it. My art isn't here to hand you answers. It's here to make you question everything around you.